Machine-type communication (MTC) is a communication involving one or more entities that do not necessarily need human interaction. The MTC may involve a large number of communicating MTC devices, (i.e., wireless transmit/receive units (WTRUs) that are equipped for MTC), with no or little traffic destined to the MTC devices, (e.g., sensor networks). The MTC devices may be battery operated, and therefore saving battery consumption and allowing for longer operation without manual intervention would be necessary.
In MTC, in some use cases, a device may be required to support mobile originated communications only, (e.g., a metering system which periodically reports measurements). Where it is expected that a device may initiate or receive calls, the network should know the location of the device, (i.e., which cell or area the device is located), even when the device is in an idle mode, so that when a call needs to be made to that device, the call can be completed timely. However, if the device only makes calls, but never receives calls, the location of the device becomes less important, since the network does not need to find the device. In other use cases, a device may be required to support infrequent mobile terminated communications, (e.g., a metering system that supports device polling by the network).